Diets, no matter how popular they are, are rarely sustainable or healthy. They frequently come with a long list of rules and can encourage disordered eating habits and can lead to eating disorders. If you’ve had this experience, there’s some good news: there’s a shift toward non diet approaches.
Mindful eating and functional nutrition are both alternatives to fad diets and are very important aspects of nutrition. But do you know what they actually mean?
In today’s blog post I’m going to break it down for you!
What is mindful eating?
Mindful eating is a way of eating that helps you pay attention to the food you’re consuming and how it makes you feel. It’s an opportunity to practice self-care by being present in the moment and enjoying your food rather than over-indulging and not feeling your best. The key to mindful eating is listening to the signals your body sends about taste, satisfaction, and fullness.
Have you ever watched TV with a family-size bag of chips that was half full one minute and empty the next, leaving you wondering how they disappeared so quickly? How about grabbing a piece of candy every time you walk past the candy jar at work?
Learning how to eat mindfully will help you to reduce/eliminate these mindless eating habits so you can take control of your food choices.
Fundamentally, mindful eating involves:
- Eating slowly and without distraction
- Listening to physical hunger cues and eating until you’re satisfied
- Distinguishing between true hunger and non-hunger triggers for eating
- Engaging your senses by noticing colors, smells, sounds, textures, and flavors
- Learning to cope with guilt and anxiety about food
- Eating foods that are both pleasing and nourishing
- Appreciating your food
Eating mindfully has numerous benefits including:
Improved digestion. Eating mindfully involves slowing down and chewing your food thoroughly, which will make it easier for your body to digest your food.
You’ll most likely choose healthier options. Think about it… you probably feel more energized when you eat more nutrient-dense meals. On the other hand, if you eat fast food quickly, you will probably feel sluggish and bloated afterwards. This knowledge encourages you to make better food decisions moving forward. When we eat more nutritionally dense foods and meet our nutrient needs, we feel it.
You’ll feel more satisfied after your meals. If you rush through eating, you might not even recall the tastes and textures of what you ate, which can decrease your level of satisfaction, meaning, you might reach for a snack even though you just ate. However, when you implement mindful eating principles and limit distractions while you eat and pay attention to what you’re eating for example, you’ll be more satisfied by the end of your meal.
You’ll have a healthier relationship with food. By listening to our body instead of some app like MyFitnessPal to tell us what to eat, how much, and when, you’ll be able to trust your body and honor what it’s telling you.
What is functional nutrition?
Functional nutrition and medicine focuses on getting to the “root” cause vs. symptom management. It incorporates Individualized care, understanding what best “serves” you at the moment, and looking at the individual as a whole, not just parts.
Functional nutrition uses food as medicine/healing (both physically and emotionally). This can be done by ordering specific labs that indicate inflammation in your body, or looking at micronutrients and how they impact each other as a whole. Therapeutic diets or supplement plans are used to help improve and rebalance your immune system and inflammatory symptoms. Functional medicine also can mean improving your mental and emotional health and incorporating new health and lifestyle behaviors.
Important areas of functional nutrition include:[1]
- A focus on whole foods. Optimal health is built on a foundation of essential nutrients found in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, quality protein, and healthy fat. In fact, one of functional nutrition’s mottos is “food as medicine,” which means avoiding processed foods and eating a colorful, diverse diet.
- Taking care of your gut. It’s important to maintain the gut environment through food and lifestyle choices because more than 70% of your immune system is located here. The gut lining can be severely damaged by a diet high in processed foods, which can result in leaky gut and a number of health problems like bloating, gas, indigestion, mental fatigue, and chronic inflammation. Consuming lots of fiber, staying hydrated, and engaging in physical activity can all help to support your gut.
- Looking at health beyond food. Your relationships, stress levels, and sleep habits are just a few aspects of your life that have an impact on how your body digests and absorbs the food you eat. Your body won’t be able to effectively use the high-quality foods you’re feeding it if you don’t get enough sleep and are under a lot of stress. You may turn to sugar-rich foods that give you a temporary “feel good” feeling in the brain but quickly create a drop in your mood and energy if you are sleep deprived and stressed out. Functional nutrition can help you make better food decisions that meet your needs and goals by looking at your experiences off the plate.
What are functional foods?
Many foods can be considered functional foods. Functional foods can include both minimally processed whole foods and fortified, enriched, or enhanced foods. In general, these foods have the ability to improve health when consumed frequently and in a specified amount. Some examples of functional foods include:[2]
- Fish (fatty fish, like salmon, sardines, trout and herring, are among some of the best choices). Fish can help lower risk of heart disease and improve infant health when consumed by women during pregnancy or while breastfeeding.
- Unsalted nuts. Nuts can help promote heart health and are good sources of magnesium, which plays a role in managing blood pressure.
- Whole grains. Whole grains may help lower cholesterol and assist with blood sugar control.
- Beans. Beans are naturally high in dietary fiber, as well as protein, potassium and folate.
- Berries. Berries contain anthocyanin pigments which may offer health benefits.
How does mindful eating and functional nutrition work together?
Functional nutrition is the holistic approach to diet, taking into consideration one’s lifestyle factors that could affect their food choices, such as activity levels, environment, or the presence of chronic disease. Basically taking all aspects outside of just eating to improve your health into consideration, which is SO important!
Mindful eating is a way of eating that helps you pay attention to the food you’re consuming and how it makes your body feel. As mentioned previously, this can look like eating without distractions, slowing down and chewing your food thoroughly, tuning into your hunger and fullness cues, etc.
As you can see, both functional nutrition and mindful eating are both important strategies to use to improve one’s health.
Improving your digestive, or “gut,” health is another primary focus of functional medicine and nutrition. By using mindful eating practices, you may help your body to digest food and absorb nutrients more effectively, which can have a significant impact on many different areas of your health as well.
You can incorporate functional nutrition and mindful eating concepts into your day-to-day life in the following ways:
- Practice gratitude. According to research, our psychological, physical, and social health can all benefit from cultivating gratitude. Practicing gratitude can look like appreciating your food before you eat it, writing in a daily gratitude journal, listening to positive affirmations daily, practicing meditation and stillness, limiting distractions, etc. You can learn more about how to start a daily gratitude practice here!
- Set your intention for a meal/activity. Eating with intention means eating in a way that supports your body, mind and soul being clear, energized and feeling your best. It’s to eat from a place of deep self love and real nourishment. Why are you choosing to eat? For example, “My intention is to nourish my body so that I’m energized throughout my busy work day, or my intention is to fuel my body before a workout so that I will have enough energy to complete it.” Learn more about setting goals and intentions here!
- Slow down and chew food thoroughly while limiting distractions when you’re eating. Chewing thoroughly helps the salivary enzymes do their job so we can efficiently absorb nutrients and get the most out of the food we’re eating because chewing is where our actual digestion starts. Limiting distractions while eating helps us to slow down and tune into our food, increasing satisfaction.
- Become aware of how your body feels before and after you eat certain foods. Start to notice how certain foods you eat makes you feel. Like I said before, fast foods and foods high in sugar or fat may make us feel bloated and sluggish. On the other hand, whole foods, such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains may make us feel more energized and good in our body. Additionally, take pauses and check-in with yourself while you’re eating to see how full you are. If we don’t honor our fullness cues, we will most likely feel uncomfortably full, and I don’t know about you, but I hate feeling that way so I make sure to stop before I reach that point.
- Don’t focus on perfection, instead make the best choice for you in the moment and current situation. Step out of that all-or-nothing mindset and focus on one goal or choice at a time.
We hope that this blog post helped you learn more about mindful eating and functional nutrition! Need extra support? If so, get on my 2023 Waitlist here!
References:
- Integrative Nutrition. (2020, December 2). What is functional nutrition? Institute for Integrative Nutrition; Integrative Nutrition.
- Functional foods. Eatright.org. Retrieved December 30, 2022.
